They were waiting for a bus. Two strangers, two different lives, but both on a similar path. The bus was to take both of them away, one to boot camp, the other to anywhere.
They were both running away.
The young woman with red hair was so sure of her decision. This was her destiny, her only way to live. She would make her father proud, all the while spitting in her mother's face. She sighed.
The young man wasn't so sure. To leave behind his friends, his love, his everything. To start something new, because the old wasn't doing anything for him. He sighed.
"Where are you going?" he asked the young woman sitting on the bench beside him.
She stared at him, "Boot camp."
"A noble cause. I applaud you."
"You?" she looked down at her boots.
"I...I honestly don't know. I just need to get out of this city. Out of this state." It was true.
She chuckled, "If you don't mind me asking, but why?"
He, too, laughed. A self-deprecating thing, "Because I fucked up. Because my friends have nothing left to give. Because...I really shouldn't offload onto a stranger."
"Then let's not be strangers. My name is Yolanda DeSoto. You can call me Lonnie."
A small smile came to his face. "Mine is Robert MacAville. You can call me Bobby."
"Well, Bobby, why are you going away?"
"I've come to realize, Lonnie, that life is just a bunch of decisions. And sometimes you choose the wrong one. Between what you want and what you need. Lust and love. Drugs and true companionship. I wanted lust. I wanted drugs. And, well, I made the wrong choices.
"I am leaving because I refuse to kill myself with cocaine. I am leaving a woman who really hates me. And I think I am looking for true friendship, and the woman I love."
Lonnie looked across the street, thinking, before replying. "Do you know who the woman you love is?"
Bobby sighed once again. "I do not."
"If you know who you loved, what would you do? Would you leave or would you stay?"
"When I was eighteen, or nineteen, I would have gone. I would have left. I was so naive back then, so foolish. Now, though? I would stay. I would stay with the person I loved. Because love is something people need, and I live for my needs, and not my wants."
The bus pulled up to the curb. The duo stood and made their way inside.
Lonnie took a seat in the back. She needed time to herself to think. What did she want? What did she need? These two questions plagued her for two night, before finally.
She rushed out of the bus when it came to a stop at Salem. She took to the nearest payphone and dialed up the Greenbriar residence. "Hello?" Sam had picked up.
"Sam! I need you to get your car and come to Salem! I love you, and I need you. Please, come, and we can just drive forever."
A/N: Gone Home really messed me up. It made me realize how important love is. I do not own Gone Home.